Business English Presentation Simulations

Do They Truly Enhance Foreign Language Communicative Competence?

Suharno Suharno

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl DR Setiabudi 229, Bandung, Indonesia

suharno@upi.edu

Keywords: FLCC; Business presentation simulations; patterns of linguistic interactions.

Abstract: The study is aimed at investigating the use of business English in business presentation simulation at

linguistics and literature study program in one public university in Bandung. The research particularly

explored the use of business presentation simulations to observe how patterns of linguistic interactions

among students were structured which was, as a final point, to find out whether the business presentation

simulations could enhance linguistic competence and how significant the enhancement was. The research

employed Interrupted Time Series design (ITS) advocated by Campbell and Stanley (2015). The data were

gathered through videotaping students’ individual presentation at the beginning of, mid, and end of the

semester. The students’ presentation performance was rated to yield quantitative data. To see students’

FLCC improvement from one presentation to another, t-test was administered. To enhance its validity, the

videos were also transcribed, coded and analyzed using QDA Miner (Onwuegbuzie and Frels, 2016). The

qualitative data analysis was also quantified to discover frequency of errors each participant made in his/her

respective presentation simulation. The analysis of the data revealed that presentation simulations had made

significant improvement in students’ FLCC.

1 INTRODUCTION

Foreign language communicative competence

(FLCC) has become almost a compulsory quality of

many careers. However, it is a common knowledge

that university graduates’ FLCC, particularly in

Indonesia, is low, that, often times, becomes a

stumbling block in their career endeavour. One of

the most important FLCC-related skill required in

corporation is business presentation (Dickinson,

1998; Sukitkanaporn and Phoocharoensil, 2014).

The ability to deliver presentation effectively in a

foreign language is a reflection of possessing good

FLCC (Jankovich, 1997).

The notion of communicative competence was

pioneered by Hymes referring to speaker’s ability to

produce and understand sentences which are

appropriate to the contexts in which they occur

(Canale and Swain, 1980). It encompasses linguistic

(forms), discourse (the ability to combine

grammatical form and meanings so as to achieve a

unified spoken or written text in different genres),

sociolinguistic (social contexts where language is

used), and strategic competences (ability to handle

communication problems resulted from imperfect

knowledge). To be able to produce context-

appropriate utterances or sentences necessitates the

speaker to possess those competences (Robinson and

H, 1988).

As a reflection of FLCC, presentation skills in

foreign language are important to both individual

and business success (Levin, 2006; Tisdale, 2005;

Yate and Sander, 2003). According to a new Prezi

survey (Galo, 2014), seventy percent of employed

Americans who give presentations agree that

presentation skills are critical to their success at

work. Even though one doesn’t have to deliver

presentation before the public on regular bases, there

are a lot of situations where good presentation (and

public speaking skills) can help you advance your

career and create opportunities.

Despite its prominence, presentation skills in

universities, both business and academic, gains

merely slim attention from lecturers (Sukitkanaporn

and Phoocharoensil, 2014). Presentation is a merely

routine information-telling showing off

comprehension of being discussed lesson without

knowing what and how presentation should be like.

This deficient attention has brought about deprived

graduates’ presentation skill. Kawasaki, an expert

Suharno, S.

Business English Presentation Simulations - Do They Truly Enhance Foreign Language Communicative Competence?.

DOI: 10.5220/0007170005050511

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 505-511

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

505

presentation trainer, observed that 95 percent of

presentations in the first LITU International

Graduate Conference were poor (Reynolds, 2007).

He said the presenters’ openings were unclear,

contents were delivered too quickly, presenters read

from the screen, and too much text on slides. In

contrast, a presenter, who was revealed to have

attended a presentation course, had the following

positive qualities: clear opening, making good use of

visuals, and engaging the audience. Therefore,

realizing how critical presentation skill is, there

should be efforts to enhance the skill in universities.

As learning from aforementioned case, presentation

skill can actually be fostered through training, that

can eventually enhance FLCC (Boyd, 1995; Evans,

2013; Friend, Adams, and Curry, 2011; Knapp,

1968).

Vocabulary.com defines simulation as the act of

imitating the behavior of some situation or some

process by means of something suitably analogous

(especially for the purpose of study or personnel

training). In broader sense, it refers to creating a

close representation of real life events. Simulation

can enhance critical thinking, content retention, and

decision making skills. When it is used in the

classroom or laboratory setting, the lecturer can

provide immediate feedback, and the students can

repeat the exercises, and experience (Billings and

Halstead, 2015). Role play, a form of simulation, is

one active learning method typically used to practice

communication skills.

In order to effectively enhancing FLCC in

business presentations with the aforementioned

benefits, simulation, in which the students are

exposed with modeling and practice, can be a good

method. Boyd (1995) and Stipek (2002) emphasizes

the importance of exposure as the necessity to be

proficient and productive language learners. He

asserts that English language learners (ELLs) should

be given a lot of opportunities to interact in

academic and social like circumstances in the

classroom. Previous study by Sukitkanaporn and

Phoocharoensil (2014) reported that there was some

statistically significant difference between English

presentation skills of the students who studied

Effective Presentations and those who did not. Thus,

business presentation simulation is an effort to create

a social like situation in the classroom to enable the

learners get sufficient language and skill exposure.

Simulation which is commonly employed in

medical, computer, and sport science to improve

performance can be well-transferred to other

disciplines like language study. Various research has

confirmed that simulation is effective in enhancing

performance (Lateef, 2010; Taher and Khan, 2014).

The reason for the improvement is that simulation

can amplify real experiences. It can scaffold the

learners to optimally acquire learned competence

and skills. Meaningful feedback that is usually

provided following students’ simulation is also a key

factor in students achieving the objectives, as well as

in being encouraged to reflect on misunderstandings

(Rivera, 1984).

According to Leigh and Maynard (2011), Russell

and Munter (2013), and Sweeney (2003), Business

Presentation is structured into opening, body, and

summary. The opening itself can be structured into

introducing problem(s) to be addressed and context,

Stating the objectives, scope and main message, and

giving outline or structure of presentation. In a body

of a presentation, the presenter (1) makes a story

board; (2) breaks up with each section making a key

point; (3) present incrementally, concisely and in

logical order Illustrate with clear examples and

visual aids. And finally at the end of the

presentation, a presenter must have a clear end to

talk, brief and simple summary of main points, and

strong reinforce the main message.

Besides mastering the stages of a presentation

with linguistic aspects that fit the stages and

contexts, body language is essential for the success

of a presentation. Body language comprises gesture,

stance, and facial expression. These are all the more

important when all eyes of an audience are upon the

presenter. When he/she is presenting, strong,

positive body language becomes an essential tool in

helping him/her build credibility, express emotions,

and connect with listeners. It also helps listeners

focus more intently on the presenter and what the

presenter is saying.

2 METHODS AND PROCEDURES

The participants involved were 25 third semester

students of English language and literature study

program Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia learning

business presentation in English as part of Listening

in professional contexts course.

The research employed interrupted time series

research design (ITS) proposed by Campbell and

Stanley (2015). It is a set of measurements taken at

intervals over a period of time. Each participant or

sample is observed multiple times, and its

performance is compared to its own prior

performance. In other words, each participant or

population serves as its own control. The main

advantage of this design is that it allows the

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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researcher to evaluate trends, predictable patterns of

events that occur with the passing of time (Goodwin

and Goodwin, 2012). The research is initiated with

pre-test (or pre-intervention) before treatment and

ended with post-test (or post-intervention) after

treatment. Interruptions can be conducted during the

treatment to measure the progress (see figure 1).

The design fits the research well for the reason

that it has characteristics elaborated in the previous

paragraph. The research was aimed at finding out the

progress or improvement in the students’

communicative competence displayed in business

presentation as a result of intervention which was in

the forms of simulations. The research was initiated

with pre-test before commencement of the program

and ended with post-test at the end of it. Another test

was administered in the middle to measure the

progress and see the trend. The test in the middle

and the end of the program was to see the

improvement and ascertain that the improvement

was attributed to the interventions/treatments. The

design has no control group(s) with consideration

that random assignment to treatment and control

groups difficult to carry out for practical reasons.

The students could not randomly be assigned

different tasks as the assignments were given

continuously and completed outside classroom.

Business Presentation was only one of the topics in

the course to be covered in two sessions while the

students were required to work on it every week

during the semester.

Figure 1: Interrupted time series design.

As seen on figure 1, for the purpose of the

research, and coincidently fulfilling students’

demand to learn business presentation, the data were

collected through scores of participants’

performance in pre-test, mid test, and final test. For

that purpose, the students were asked to videotape

their presentation outside classroom (not in class

sessions). Their performance was then carefully

scored and analysed. Based on the pre-test, the

participants were given feedback and trained how to

deliver effective business presentation. The

participants were pre-taught with notions of business

presentation (Sweeney, 2003; Templeton, 2010), and

videos taken from various internet sources. In the

first month of the semester, they were also exposed

to business presentation by modelling effective

business presentation from business presentation

videos. The participants were then assigned to

videotape their own presentations in the middle of

the program (after three months, in the time of mid

semester test) and at the end of the program (in the

time of final examination). Therefore, videotaping

was done three times during the semester in which

the interventions were given between each. The

presentations were rated based on delivery, mastery

of the content, the ability of applying notions of

presentation, language aspects, such as

pronunciation, usage and vocabulary, and non-verbal

language. The students were then given feedback to

improve their performance in the upcoming

presentation.

To answer the research question whether or not

presentation simulations improve students’ FLCC,

and how significant the improvement is, quantitative

data analysis was administered to find out the

improvement of each aspects rated and how

significant students’ FLCC as a whole from one

simulation into another. To reveal the significance, t-

test available in Excel 2013 was used yielding t-

values. To know improvement from the first to the

second simulation, t-test was administered to rate

score of presentation 1 and 2, and the improvement

from second to third simulation, t-test was

administered to rated score of the second and third

presentations. If t-values are greater than t-table at df

24 (df is the number of participants subtracted by 1),

and α.05, the null hypothesis, there is no significant

improvement, is rejected meaning that the

hypothesis is accepted, in other words, presentation

simulations can improve students’ FLCC.

To enhance validity, another analysing tool was

used. When all videotaping was completed, the

videos were transcribed and analysed using QDA

Miner to find out students’ FLCC progress from one

presentation to another. QDA Miner is a qualitative

text analysis software package for coding, retrieving,

annotating, and analysing text documents. The

qualitative data resulted from QDA Miner analyses

Business English Presentation Simulations - Do They Truly Enhance Foreign Language Communicative Competence?

507

were then quantified to compute each aspects

analysed. The progress was measured by frequency

of linguistic errors (pronunciation, grammar,

vocabulary) and organization errors, e.g. [opening

(greeting audience, self-introduction, stating the

objective, stating the structure of the presentation)].

The participants’ FLCC experience improvement if

their errors kept decreasing in the last two

presentations. Even though body language, which

has been stated earlier as essential factor for the

success of a presentation, was not in the analysis.

Apart from time limitation, as videotaping was not

part of class sessions, it was quite hard to analyse

non-verbal communication from videos.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Result

Six-month research on improving FLCC through

business presentation simulation has eventually

yielded some findings:

(1)There was significant improvement of

students’ FLCC in language aspects from one

presentation to another (see Figure 2). The

improvement can be seen from average score of

each participant in three elements of language rated:

usage, vocabulary, and pronunciation.

Figure 2: Improvement in language aspects.

To find out how significant the improvement

from 1

to 2

, and 2

to 3

presentation was, t-test

was administered. The t-test of the 1

to the 2

presentation, at df 24, α.0.5 revealed that t-value was

2.96 and the test to 2

to 3

presentation, t-value

was 2.64. Both t-values 2.96 and 2.64 were greater

than t-table 2.064 meaning that FLCC improvement

from presentation 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 was significant.

This improvement was probably as a result of

participants’ effort in response to feedback from one

presentation simulation to another. The

improvement of FLCC in the aspects of language is

visualized in a bar graph as seen in Figure 3.

(2) The t-test to find out how significant was

improvement to mastery of content, revealed that

both t-values 0,031 and 0.002 were lower than the t-

table 2.064, at df 24 and α0.05. The finding means

that the improvement in mastery of content was not

significant (see Figure 4). Different from language

aspects, the improvement in mastery of the content

which was not significant, was probably resulted

from the fact that the content was different from one

presentation to another.

Figure 3: FLCC improvement in language aspects.

Figure 4: Improvement in content mastery.

(3) In delivery, as seen on Figure 5 and 6, t test

reveals that t-values to presentation 1 to 2, and 2 to 3

were respectively 2.281 and 2.37, both greater than

t-table 2.064 at df 24 and α.05, meaning that the

improvement in delivery was significant. Out of

three aspects rated in delivery, rapport or

engagement with the audience had the highest

improvement. It is probably as a result of strong

criticism in feedback as at the beginning, the rapport

was the weakest.

Figure 5: Improvement in delivery.

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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Figure 6: Individual improvement in delivery.

(4) The result of analysis on error frequency

using QDA Miner was also in line with the

aforementioned findings. The data, visualized in two

graphs below, show that the students’ FLCC

improved from one presentation to another. The

improvement can be seen from the decreasing

frequency of errors in language aspects and

organization/norm of presentation from one

presentation to another. The average of frequency of

errors in the aspects of language in the first

presentation was 53.307. The errors declined to

42.912 in the second, and 27.304 in the last

presentation (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: Frequency of errors in language aspects.

Finally, the frequency of errors in presentation

procedure or organization also declined from one

presentation into another. At the first presentation

simulation, the average frequency of errors was

26.73, while at the second, it decreased to 16.23, and

12.09 at the final simulation (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Average frequency of errors in the three

simulation.

3.2 Discussion

The research has yielded important positive

confirmation to previous research in providing

simulation as a way to improve competence and

performance (Amparo García-Carbonell, Beverly

Rising, Begoña Montero, and Frances Watts, 2001;

Dostal, 2016). The rising trend in measurement from

pre to mid, and post intervention shows that it is

indeed essential to facilitate students with

simulation, hands on experience and meaningful

feedback. The participants were much more

competent in foreign language (English) as seen in

their last business presentation compared to that of

the first. They were able to use appropriate

expressions in formal events like business

presentation with lessening language errors such as

usage, pronunciation, and vocabulary (diction).

Similarly, communicative competence improvement

took place in delivery as in poise, rapport and

clarity. The improvement, however, varied in both

language aspects and aspects of delivery.

In language, compared to pronunciation and

vocabulary, the highest improvement was in correct

usage from 3.08 to 3.8 or almost 8 points. It

probably stem from the use of much better formal

English. At the beginning, though their English was

fluent, the participants were not accustomed to use

English in formal events. Participants’ ability in

using appropriate formal English usage (form) was

the weakest aspect of their communicative

competence. The treatments of engaging provision

of simulation and feedback during the program

seemed to take effect to the participants’ use of

formal English. On the other hand, with regard to

pronunciation, regardless of its formality, words are

not pronounced differently that the change was not

as high as usage. The improvement was probably the

result of feedback that have made participants aware

of carefully checking the pronunciation before

giving presentation. Finally, presentations with

different topics needed different diction, therefore,

26,73

16,23

12,09

ER AVE PRES 1 ER AVE PRES 2 ER AVE PRES 3

Frequency

Average Errors

Presentation

Business English Presentation Simulations - Do They Truly Enhance Foreign Language Communicative Competence?

509

the learned vocabulary for one presentation was

unable to be used for another. However, similar to

pronunciation, feedbacks had made participants to

check appropriateness in diction from one

presentation to another.

In regard to delivery, at the beginning,

participants had minimal knowledge of presentation

techniques that the continual treatment had possibly

made them learn the techniques a lot resulted in

significant improvement. Among the three aspects

seen in the research, rapport gained the highest,

almost 9 points. The reason for the change was

probably that presentation technique is not

commonly taught at universities even in language

study program. Continues treatments during the

program had probably made them realize of the

importance of techniques for the success of

presentations, especially of business. Besides,

simulations had probably given them model of

various techniques to learn and practice.

Considering how important business

presentation skill is to acquire by students regardless

of their study programs, the skills have to be given

space to be taught as a separate course in universities

so the students can have more competitive edge in

jobs and careers. Language competence as seen in

TOEFL or TOEIC score, for instance, is not a

warranty to make it workable in real use of language

for occupational purposes especially in business.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Based on above analysis, considering how important

business presentation skill is to acquire by students

regardless of their study programs, the skills have to

be given space to be taught as a separate course in

universities so the students can have more

competitive edge in jobs and careers. Language

competence as seen in TOEFL or TOEIC score, for

instance, is not a warranty to make it workable in

real use of language for occupational purposes

especially in business.

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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